Curried Chicken

Tonight Kaori talked me through cooking one of my favorite chicken dishes which we usually call カレー味チッケン or Curry-flavored chicken.

Ingredients

For the chicken:

• 2 boneless chicken thighs
• Corn starch, enough to coat the chicken
• Vegetable oil, enough to coat your frying pan
• 1 tbsp Sugar
• 1 tbsp Mayonaise
• 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1 tbsp Oyster Sauce
• 1 tbsp Cooking Rice wine
• 1 tbsp Curry Powder

To go with it

• 1 cup Rice
• A bag of pre-washed salad

For the soup:

• Chicken boulion
• 1 egg
• Dried Wakame (seaweed) or other small green veggie

Step by step

Start the rice first since it’ll take awhile.

Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks. This is easier if the chicken is still half-frozen so no need to get crazy with the defrost. Just nuke it enough so it’s a little soft on the outside.

Next coat the chicken in corn starch. Just pour it over the chicken while it’s still on the cutting board and mix by hand. Use enough to cover all sides of the chicken.

Start heating a frying pan on medium heat. Pour in enough vegetable oil so that you have a thin coat over most of the pan. Once the pan is warm, put in the chicken and stir a little bit with a spoon.

While the chicken cooks, get a small bowl and mix together 1 table spoon each of the Sugar, Mayonaise, Soy Sauce, Oyster Sauce, and Rice Wine. If you do it in that order you can use the same spoon for everything. Then add the curry powder. About 1 table spoon should do it, but you can add more if you want more kick. Mix it together until it looks like this.

Keep turning the chicken till it gets a bit golden, then stir in the sauce you just made. It’s pretty strong if you put in all of it, so feel free to leave some out.

Once you add the sauce keep it moving and don’t let it get too hot because the sauce can burn. Let it cook for another minute or two so it gets brown, then take it off the heat and the chicken is done.

You can serve it with some rice and salad. To get those nice little domes, just pack the rice into a small rice bowl then flip it over onto a plate. You may have to jiggle it a bit, but if the rice is hot it should fall out of the bowl pretty easily. And of course it looks best next to a beer.

As for the soup, this was pretty easy. Just boil enough water to fill your soup bowls, plus a little extra. Add in chicken boulion until the water has a bit of flavor. I used 1.5 tbsp of powdered boulion. Beat 1 egg in a bowl, then pour it into the boiling broth in a circular motion and follow it with a quick gentle stir. Add in the dried wakame, or whatever small green vegie you have handy (scalions, finely cut spinach or broccoli). One more quick stir and you’re done.

Where to find some of this stuff

So a couple of these things might be hard to find at your regular grocery store. Oyster Sauce should be available in most asian markets. Rice Wine for cooking might be in your grocery store, but if not, most asian markets should have this as well. As for the curry powder, I’m pretty sure a basic McCormick curry powder should work but you may need to adjust the amount. I recommend tasting the sauce as you make it to find the right mix. The dried wakame would be another asian market thing, but as I mentioned anything to give it a bit of green color and veggie flavor should work fine. The egg and boulion provide most of the soup’s substance.